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Supreme Court rules for Samsung in smartphone fight with Apple
- wyldfire 10y ago> The justices in their 8-0 ruling sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings. Interesting part of Sotomayor's opinion [1]. "The parties ask us to go further and resolve whether, for each of the design patents at issue here, the relevant article of manufacture is the smartphone, or a particular smartphone component. Doing so would require us to set out a test for identifying the relevant article of manufacture ... We decline to lay out a test ..." Sounds to me like the decision is based on the subtle specific scope of the patent(s) and or legislation on what scope is allowed. [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-777_7lho.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-777_7lho.pdf
- Hupriene 10y agoThe actual opinion is quite short. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-777_7lho.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-777_7lho.pdf It basically states that if a single component of a multi-component device infringes a patent, then calculations of damages based on profit can (but aren't required to) consider only the profit made on that component. While the ruling is in Samsung's favor, it seems unlikely to make much of a difference in the disposition of the case.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoThis is probably a good precedent. If my product has 15 lines of infringing code out of 2 million, then you shouldn't be entitled to my entire profit margin. There should be some basic test by the courts to determine what percentage is liable. This means less of a payout and ideally lower incentives for patent trolls to litigate and more of a "fair" compensation instead of a winner-takes-all model that seems to be the default.
- AstroJetson 10y agoExactly, I agree this is a good precedent. I think that manufactured goods are much more complex and that it needs to be accounted for.
- yoz-y 10y agoAlthough I agree with the idea I also think that this could potentially make litigation even more lengthy. It would also be possible for companies to hedge the risk and simply copy the hard, but minimal part.
- AstroJetson 10y agoIt could, but it's also now fraught with having juries that don't know the product lines to be able to decide damages. How to get them to think a corner or 15 lines of code is worth 100's of millions is a pretty interesting task. I bet there are law firms who read the SCOTUS blog and are on the path of trying to hire techno-law-splainers to make that work for them.
- lightedman 10y ago"If my product has 15 lines of infringing code out of 2 million, then you shouldn't be entitled to my entire profit margin." If out of 2M lines of code you have 15 infringing lines, unless those lines are to something very specific and not general like say a simple random number generator anyone using that language would write the exact same way, you shouldn't have to pay jack and it shouldn't be considered infringing in the first place.
- mayneack 10y agoIs this politics?
- nrki 10y ago> The 5.7 terawatt-hours of electricity Google consumed > [Microsoft] data centers currently use about 3.3 million megawatt-hours Come on, editor.
- vinay427 10y agoI think you meant to comment on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13114803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13114803
- perseusprime11 10y agoAt this point, Samsung should just pay up and focus on removing the "explode" feature from their smart phones. They did copy the designs blatantly.
- michaelmrose 10y agoThe engineers are working on one the lawyers on another its not like the legal team is going to roll up their sleeves and pull out some schematics.
- vxNsr 10y agoWow pretty crazy that's it's fully unanimous
- umanwizard 10y agoLots of SC decisions are unanimous. I think the majority in fact.
- wyldfire 10y agoThis was flagged for being political or some other reason?
- dang 10y agoProbably for being political. We did ask users to err on the side of flagging for one week. Clearly it would normally be on topic.